


Retalings

by TellaTaleofShaunorShem



Category: 17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future - Jon Bois, Finnegans Wake - James Joyce, Original Work
Genre: American Football, Angst, Anxiety, Bible, Coaches, College Football, Comedy, Dreams, Fear, Gen, James Joyce - Freeform, Jokes, Original Character(s), Other, Paranoia, Priests, Puns & Word Play, Surreal, Weird Plot Shit, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27285694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TellaTaleofShaunorShem/pseuds/TellaTaleofShaunorShem
Summary: The mind wanders.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	1. Compost Mentis

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a 17776 fan fic. Then it became not one, but I think I shall remember its origins. This is about football, not space probes, if only barely, but I hope you still like it.

James has fallen, a slip.

  
In Flodden Field the oiley rich are diving down the field. James Finnican is their leader - slippery as an eel, crafty as a fox, canny as sardines- quarterback but full in our huarte of harts. The earth squelches beneath his bestroddering cleets as drives the boll up and doon the field. Rarely has he been defeated, his stratactics unpariballed. A knut is he for ways worth saban. Old 51, off tackle. Every man to their own and safety left out of place. Twas but a few year ago he'd his start. The pitch was frozen, the oiley rich held to a drip. Their haeneas foe, the Trojans. Thrice hath the oiley rich assyrialed the gates of Troy, once by land and twice by error, incompletions both. Firth a four striched befifth them, the timeout was called. Finnican spoke in hoodle, warning off cold. He said, “You remember our guennesis? We were stout. But not now. We must win by trickery! By the right wheel - doolittle, by the left - rollins! Steal the win!” And he gathered them closer and sayed 'Lads, I want you to gyp one for the winner’”

Allmen. When they could not polka it in, they waltzed across. But the jig is up. Multigubinous foes have arraised their heads - bilemakers and wolfertines and goofers and razabacks and rebels and mootiniers and trojans. They were Legion. On sodden sod and boggen bog they faced the champions, the oileyrich. James Finnican, theotoejam in training, prayed, a pate-a-pater.

And the word answered quickly. You get the boll to the inzone. But how? The field ahead is barred - it is hopeless. Take the ball by the horns. Run ware yule never be found. They’ll expict you to surrender. They expict you to dispair. But oh ho! They’ll never see you disapair! James Finnican wriggled, and broke free.

In late night diners the rumor began, in morning papers, the rumor ran, in field and stream, the rumor swam, and in portable radio, the rumor ham. The ball, ware was the ball? And posessid, by hoom? Tails were loomed - fabric unstretchable - yarns spun - loose, breathable. Explanations, conspiracies, expounded and expanded on AM and PM radio. You are now Listzening to classical WETA - _bzz-_ oh Lord have mercenaries - _bzz-_ and in the final, Dow beats Jones, 28-17 - _bzz-_ two easy payments - _bzz-_ ONABAGEL - _bzz-_ On the disapairance of the Oirish football from the Battle of Flodden Field, where James assailied IV and died befour Troyan sbrawn. They knew far wan manth weedle kam, and sat thamsalves in pasitions interegnumable. Finnican, Finnican, ora wai did ye dive! Allein like that is impossible! - _bzz-_ Buy Mattaponi Mascarpone - _bzz-_ not tha only nascar pony _-bzz_ \- James Finnican had stooped to listen in, but could listen no more. A slip of the whill? He? James Finnican, master tacticianin, conkerer of fields and of men? He fumbled, and lay down in covert culvert. He has fallen, a slip.

Lucid for only a second, a prisoner stirs. Chained beast, primordial, ancient, descended. Sait again. In dramatic lore their names are Death, Destruction, Pestilence and Famine. But those are aliases. On Stuhldreher, on Crowley, on Miller and Layden! Black knights flee before black horse hooves. A midwestern typhon swirls on apoloyon Grounds. Crowley off left tackle, good for five. Stuhldreher, noch naeher, to the goal line. The crowd is thrumming and brumming with folk. Childer clamber onter elder shoulders. The peanut hawker has perched. A storm is brooming - Rockne calls the sweep! The field is scythed and barren. Into sundered wound the horsemen ride. The people cry - tummult, pummult, hats disheadeled, strangers embraced, rafters disbeveled. Their names salubrated over pints and cursed over mourning coffee in west point. And in the pressed box, the writer in fedora elbows himself room and types, and make myths out of boys.

The boo-jim beast turns.

Light cripts over the horizon. Rain pores through the tents where the fighting men are parked. O day of days, dear James, long awaited, anticipated, breath bated, grounds invested and investigated. On flat land Trojan and Celt have agreed to meet. Down below lies the flett wett field. James is dressed in armour - green uniform by mail. He stands in the great swilling mass. They come to combat with flags and crosses and bills and pikes. The armies meet and grapple in the mud. The sward is cut underfoot. James bellered, hollowed, swore. Quarter after quarter the armies grow quieter, depleted in sictions. Defeat seemed sure. And it is here that interpridizations appear and conflict in out hastingorical acount. Som say this post morto addingtootion, samesay it is legend. Sam call him fool, others hero. He cast aside his overcoat, tore off his mail, bared his breast to the inime and went like a man possissed to the center of the fury. Gallantly he fought, but it was not enough. His boys were obliterated, whipped and routed, and James was exposed to all the world.

What skandiknaverious behaviour. Diabolical, devilrous. Unbefitting even of a steamed member of faculty. Did you learn that in cleretical school? He was roundly chastised and shamed. His family, friends, acquaintances, classmates and television hosts questions about his health, sanity and playcalling. Neighbors are asked and neighing boors speak. His mother was observed drinking tea on a Saturday afternoon and his father cleaning the shed. His brother Shaun Finnican pronounced him on television a shem, a sham, a shedulous shyster, a shoe-shtring shalesman, a shit shooed dishembler, and a right sheshire schat. Shays who? Shays Olivus, roommate, observer, who whinks and whispers at certain bestial okurences. The sausage is made with intube-endo. His humination is disturbated by print and broadcast media. His name becomes byword in contemporary parlance for slop brained foolishness, and pig brained troughishness. Rhymes rhun wild with the children, to hit: 

Silly James Finnican,

He’ll never win again,

Aches, bruises,

See how he loses.

And:

Flailing James Finnican stood on the wall, 

Flailtering James Finnican had a hell of a fall,

All the pope’s horses and all of their kin,

Could not yolk him to the grindstone again.

For it was true - he really was cracked. His egg-old-whits had left him. He spoke quickly, in fury and agitation to the assembled press pool. His eyes darted from side to side as his fingers punched the air. He denied everything and denounced his persecutors. “There is no truth!” He declaimed, “to the rumors of impropriety and insobriety. I do not collaborate with the enemy. I do not wish my schemes to failure. I do not speak unkindly to small children. I do not cheat on my taxes. I do not covet my neighbor’s wife. I do not covet leaving.” A hundred eager leeches writhe to their feet. “You incriminate yourself!” they cried. “There was never any mention of another school! You have shown yourself guilty!” “We always knew you were a traitor, black Irish!” A man sneered from the back. “No!” He shouted, standing on the table, “You have it all wrong! I am happy here! There’s no place better! I’ll never leave you!”

His words petered into silence as he looked down at his hands. The reporters had drawn back, amazed, for starting at his very fingertips, he had grown pale, and clear. It crept up his arms, into his chest and legs and head, till he had vanished entirely.

The door was locked and barred, and the room scoured. Seat cushions were torn open, vents opened and probed, the floorboards and wallboards tapped and sounded for hidden compartments. The newspapermen stared through where he had once stood, some grasping the air in disbelief. And all agreed that, never had he disappeared when needed so cleanly, or so spectacularly.


	2. Finalroil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a work in progress, with really quite a lot more to be added to it. I thought it would be swell to share that which I have so far. It does get a bit less narrative at times.

James Finnican has disapaled. Aento Aether aet saems. Exhaustive ehnvestigation of relatives’ abodes, interior commodes, mailboxes and roads, projuices no leads. His name and face are reproduced on milk cartoons and yard signs. It is the pronounced opinion of Pedagogmagog Hesburgh that he has died, and is assumed in heaven. A finalroil in abcessia organiscizes in the Basilisk of the Stone Heart.

The pews are pewtrid with pewpils. In the fraunt row, where the family has settled, his three ondts are knittering. Spinner drawer snipper, chitterchatterer oll. Wyrd sisters of patriguinneseal line. They are nourning, Atropos of death. Clotho together they sit, trading yarns. Their names are, in order of birth, Clothagh, Saoirse and Eileen. Dottering doterors, pats, presents, and furniture they bestowed in the boy. 

“Do you remember,” Clothagh exposited, uncoiling a ball of yarn, “when in this church James and Shaun were bowled over together? The chrystomom had Shaun crying, but James was so will behaveyours, calm and manly.” “Manly, yes,” expictorated Saoirse, klicking her kneedles as her yarn warped wefted and wombed, “He really is such a strawng handsome blond young man.” Clotagh conjunctioned, “Shaun was pitching the fifth, balling in his mutter’s, but John was as still as the baby in the mangler, bless his hart.” Eileen interconjeculated, “He would be a priest later.” “Onanoff the field, he would learn to deke em.” “That was cardinal wit, Eileen!” “He wood bless the water and wine and bread, take the holy ordeourves. He will be a loss to the profession.” “And he was a loss to the ladies of the world! Remember senior night?” mused Clothagh, reclinated, pairsing the impty coffin, “when he came back to the sideline, and the facepaintedladies reached out over the chainlink fence to touch him?” “And he rejects them all!” “They never will know him now.” “Nor does anyone.” “Nor did they.”

“It is a shame for all with a diskerning eye he went to semenary school. Vicarility, the arced bishop,” Saoirse asskirted. “So handoffsome as a freshman, so passoversome as senior,” Clothagh mouted. “The hands passed over the bread and wine. He would whistle it, wet or dry, 30 40 times a day. He would rub the leather till the balls were cracked chapped and faded,” Eileen intimated. “He puts on such a show on Saturdays.” “Whenever he fell he rose, and whenever he rose he fell again. Tireless, seeceless toil. He worked up and down, back and ford.” “We would gush over him so, wouldn’t we?” “He brings fond memories to mind. I show his christmas cards and photografs to friends and neybors. Magnetized to the friggerator,” Saoirse gabbard. “He would be a football player. You knew it from the start,” concurated Eileen.

“It was after first communican I had gathered some sliver of his talents. He was captain and commander of the local erkins, gave the plays, threw the passes. They tore and mudded their Sunday suits, and were afterword reprimanded of good grass. A canon of an arm. Sonata he threw it, fugueitaboutit.” “He would be a great one,” enjoindered Eileen.

Sigh it again. The three fats sit knittering in the fraunt row. Behind them shitteth Shaun the brother. He lies on the bench, disassambler, perjurtor, erstwhile editor and principal writer, of and for, prepositionally respecting, a magazine of little cachsket, specialitizing in short fictions and proesetry. He writes incendiossly, pen sparking as his hand flicks and flickers over the yellowed legal pad in his lap. Notes, ascervations, quipicisms, jockularities. His little specktickles dart adjudicationally as he misch metashphors the peoples. There’s the meadheaded beer swillowers, oxheaded and rotorious, the offensive linemen, and behind them, lithe gazebralas, the skill positions offensive and defensieve (As was remarked and propounded in barbar shops and barbar pubs and jawjaw televiceian talk shouts, the defense had allowed 347.8 yards per gram and was - in the considered opinion of Joe Blount, 54, of Pittsburgh, 530 Berwin avenue, expectorated at 11:12 pm on the pavement immediately outside Baldwin’s sports bar, 2249 Liberty avenue - shit) and behind them, various of James’s aquinances from theological school, and intermingled, a few, more augustine prophecors. All and everything Shaun wrote about - the young cousin irritating his sister and their mother irrigating her cheeks, the grayt ont with a hiccop, the prayst with a sniff and coffin.

The coffin. Symbolic, pregnant with meaning(?) - ~~(bulging old cow in a white moomoo)~~ ~~ha!~~ For later “our birth was on this unwise”. Space enough for the two of us, now holds none of us. James. None saw him like eye did. Mother and father gauzy, glasseyed, proudaderboy. Strong and long ~~and sp~~ ~~oon delirious~~ (no good phrase, discard) and ~~flaxen hair~~ (flaxen? Cliche! Expungate, expurge!) Me dark haired fratnocturnal twin. Baa baa black sheep. Nary a hair on my skinny chin chin. Sturdy in contrasts. I fiminine, he meskulene. I demure, he demiurge. (Keep, reconfigure. A phrase to be supported by later anticdotes. Of how we played when young. And with who. Their names? Simon and Andrew Peterson, John Tarpey, Philip Bartolo, Matthew Thomas, Diego Alphonso, Zed Simpson, Jed Jameson, and eye ~~(~~ ~~who ate bread? taters?~~ ~~)~~ ) Everybody flocked to James. ~~(~~ ~~Suffer the children. bzz, bzz, aieou!~~ ~~)~~ Skull dee over at tree turkey, dinner at sit thirsty, homerk till bed, but play befourhand. 

The praysts enter. Allmen allrise allfall. Almonds. Almonds and apple seeds, (contain sayonaride. What scrumdiddlyduplictious foods didst tempeth Eveth.) 

They wear table runners on their chest

And ~~vestrimints , fjords,(what?)~~ table clothes for a vest?

And they work in bread and wine

Shall we on them dine?

~~Priest Ben Dover, father divine~~

Take of this, my bloody. Take of this, my fresh. In corpus delecto. Fatha beans and chanty. Ho ho ho, he chortled in the goy. Gentile with him. Now isn’t curious that the Quitritians got Lamb and the Judians got Ham when the latter can eat the former and not their own? Bloody liberals. The praters drone, ~~o how they moan, groan and bone~~ like they did in Sinday sk ~~oooo~~ l, retightening the catincision. (Do you take this sound minded nine livened felionid to be in good health and in bad pelt, for witches and pores, with interest and snores, to be reaccomadated amongst and amidst your eternal organs? I do. “And with a hideous mewl the cat was soon up inside. The End.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, let me know if it was enjoyable.


End file.
